How much does a website cost in 2021?
Your website is the most critical sales and marketing tool you have.
It’s the should be the centre of your marketing strategy, and it’s the first thing your prospective customers want to explore before making a purchase or even talking to you.
Now that most businesses understand the value of a business website overall is getting better. They’re faster, sleeker, mobile-friendly, and expected to be more useful. Great for the consumer but makes your job that much harder.
We’re all forced to step up if we want to stand out from our competitors, which leads us to the inevitable project all modern businesses will face at one point or another — a website redesign.
The cost of a website redesign can vary tremendously from as low as a few hundred dollars if you do it yourself to millions of dollars for an advanced, custom-built website.
Since businesses often have no idea how much they should pay for a website and what to expect, we’ve decided to try and answer that question.
Why web design costs have increased
Like everything else, the price of a website redesign mainly comes down to supply and demand. When the internet was still relatively new, businesses didn’t understand how valuable a website was, so they weren’t willing to pay a high price.
Today, a website is one of the first considerations a business makes when planning its launch. Many entrepreneurs narrow down their potential business names based on which domains are available and how the URL will look.
Of course, increased demand isn’t the only factor, however.
Websites must be more advanced.
As time has passed, web designers have improved their techniques and access to much better tools. On the one hand, pumping out a decent-looking website is easier than ever with builders like Squarespace and WIX. On the other hand, building a genuinely first-class website presence requires more work.
The landscape is rapidly evolving — even more than in the beginnings of the internet. For example, it wasn’t until 2015 that Google announced that their search algorithms would show preference to mobile-friendly websites, even though web designers were preaching its importance since around 2009;
They knew that businesses need to deliver a better user experience, but eventually, Google would raise the standards looking at the growth of mobile buyer behaviour. At the time, mobile design was more complicated than it is today, and it was much easier for designers (and cheaper for their clients) to avoid it.
In today’s world, if your website doesn’t include mobile optimisation, Google is going to penalise you for it.
Now websites also contain live chat so users can instantly get in contact with your company.
Not only has functionality changed, but the requirements to have an optimised website have become more rigorous. Focusing on page speed, accessibility, and user experience are more important than ever.
All of these factors can affect your website’s cost, but another major is the process or method behind its execution.
In this blog, we’ll look at three of the most popular methods: building your website yourself with an online tool, hiring a freelancer, or hiring an agency.
The cost of doing it yourself
The building or redesigning a website yourself with a template is usually the cheapest option. It can range anywhere from a few hundred pounds to £3,000 or more, but the real “cost” here is the time and hassle.
Generally, the less money you spend, the more time and hassle you can expect to deal with to get the site how you want it — and it likely won’t be precisely how you want it to be without the ability to code.
New startups with limited budgets and no web developer often have to start small. ThemeForest offers tons of affordable website themes (mainly for WordPress) to choose from, usually cost around £200 to £100.
Functionality, performance, and ease-of-use from those themes vary widely, including the level of customisation you can achieve, how easy it is to update the theme, and out of the box templates that are included. Once you find a theme that meets your needs, you’ll also have to make sure that it’s received positive reviews, has a strong track record and allows you to make edits without any technical skill.
Another popular option is a website builder such as Elementor, which is essentially an updated back-end editor for your website that you install on WordPress. This allows you to create content and edit the visual features of your theme with ease by giving you a variety of modules and widgets to level, each with its own unique formatting and styling options.
Once you’ve installed the framework, you’ll be able to select a theme to match the aesthetic you’re looking to achieve.
Their framework is a huge step up from the lower-priced themes on the market. They look great, are mobile-friendly, optimised for search engines, and easy to use. Take a look at their themes here — a lot of them will look familiar because tons of websites use them.
You can start using Elementor for free, but the Pro level of £49 per year for one site gives you more robust widgets, templates, support, and more.
The cost of hiring a freelancer for a website redesign
The next level up from building your website is hiring a freelance website designer. Freelancers have various levels of talent and will charge accordingly.
Depending on what your goals are, you should be able to find a freelancer that will charge anywhere from £1,000 to £5,000
They will vary further depending on the experience of your freelancer and your project details.
For example, if your freelancer is exceptionally talented and can build you a custom self-selection tool such as a product configurator, or you opt to go through a branding exercise with them, your costs may go even higher than that.
When working with a freelancer, you can likely expect a design that looks good and functions well without any glaring flaws. They will probably take your ideas, come up with a few mock-ups for you to consider, and then they’ll build off of the one you like best.
In most cases, the freelance designer mainly focused on delivering aesthetic appeal you describe to them while suggesting certain features to improve user experience.
However, the downsides are that freelancers tend to be more hit-or-miss. The project might take longer if they are doing everything by themselves or are juggling multiple projects, and they might not offer much insight outside of design and development knowledge.
At the end of the day, if you’re not in the DIY type of mood, you’ll likely be able to find a freelancer to fit your budget, keep in mind that it will go up or down based on how big your project is.
The cost of hiring an agency for a website redesign
The other option is hiring an agency to handle your website redesign, which gives you access to a team of seasoned experts who likely have experience with goals like yours and designing a website around them. However, as you would expect, a website redesign from an agency costs the most.
A more straightforward website redesign can run anywhere from £1,000 to £3,000 depending on the site’s size, whereas websites with a large page count, custom functionality, and more unique needs can cost much much more.
This may seem mad compared to the other options, but working with an agency goes much further than design. Agencies spend equal time on content, user experience, conversion rate, and everything else that makes your website an asset to your company and to achieve your goals.
What sets an agency apart from most freelancers is the strategy that goes into building a fantastic lead-generating machine for you.
A typical agency will work with you on your sitemap to understand the structure of your website and how the user journey is achieved.
You’ll be gaining access to a range of experts who can pull from their many years of experience with design, development, strategy, content, testing, SEO, not just a single resource.
Find the budget, bring in an agency!
It’s worth your time to talk with some to see what options you have available.
Continuous improvement
Your site design or redesign launching, while a cause for joy, doesn’t mean you should move on to until you redesign again in three years.
That’s another reason to consider an agency Growth-driven design. Growth-driven design is a process that helps you build a more robust project month over time using user data to help improve the journey.
What are you thinking? “This sounds expensive” well maybe, there is an investment to improve your website continuously.
You can expect a monthly cost to achieve this.
How does content affect the cost?
Content is one of the essential parts of your website design.
It gets your site to rank in the search engines, drives your user to take action.
Content when building your website yourself
If you’re going alone, map all of the pages out that you want your website to include, then write the actual content for each of the pages. Then, when you’re comparing website themes, you can pick out one that accommodates your content strategy.
Content when working with agencies
A lot of web designers will have a copywriter they work with, or they’ll be happy to work with someone that you hire yourself. Either way, ensure that both are on the same page because the process requires some real attention.
Putting the price of your website into reality
Imagine a salesperson who works 24 7, pushing your business to prospects. Given the tools, this salesperson continually improves with minimal intervention on your part.
Whenever a customer wants information about your business when you’re sleeping, your main man is there with a smile and all the information.
How much does a website cost in 2021? Call us HERE
